Repugnant Foreign Judgments

Abstract

I am between flights at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, sitting on a comfortable chair outside of Starbucks and thinking about an editorial that ran in the New York Times a few weeks earlier. It seems that an author, resident in New York State, had authored a book accusing a Saudi sheik of financing terrorism. The sheik sued the author in Great Britain for libel where it was reported only a few copies of her book were sold. She failed to appear or defend and a default judgment was entered against her.The author had no assets in Great Britain or Saudi Arabia so the sheik sought to enforce his judgment in New York under New York’s Uniform Foreign Money Judgment Recognition Act (UFMJRA) which provides, with a few exceptions, that foreign judgments are final, conclusive and enforceable in the country where rendered and are deemed conclusive between the parties and enforceable by United States Courts. The Times was outraged because it believed that the author would have been able to assert First Amendment defenses had she been sued in the United States.The author goes on to explain how this situation was handled and finally resolved, with some additional comments on how this fits in with Maryland law.